“Ah, come back wan minnit!”
“A flirt!” said the sentry.
“You will pay for that,” said the girl to the sentry, with quick anger.
“Do you love me, Irishman?” she added, to McGilveray.
“I do—aw, wurra, wurra, I do!” said McGilveray. “Then you come and get me by ze front door of ze city,” said she, and a couple of quick strokes sent her canoe out into the dusky middle of the stream; and she was soon lost to view.
“Aw, the loike o’ that! Aw, the foine av her-the tip-top lass o’ the wide world!” said he.
“You’re a fool, an’ there’ll be trouble from this,” said the sentry.
There was trouble, for two hours later the sentry was found dead; picked off by a bullet from the other shore when he showed himself in the moonlight; and from that hour all friendliness between the pickets of the English and the French ceased on the Montmorenci.
But the one witness to McGilveray’s adventure was dead, and that was why no man knew wherefore it was that McGilveray took an oath to drink no more till they captured Quebec.
From May to September McGilveray kept to his resolution. But for all that time he never saw “the tip-top lass o’ the wide world.” A time came, however, when McGilveray’s last state was worse than his first, and that was the evening before the day Quebec was taken. A dozen prisoners had been captured in a sortie from the Isle of Orleans to the mouth of the St. Charles River. Among these prisoners was the grinning corporal who had captured McGilveray and then released him.